It’s Not About Slavery!

A few summers ago, my brother and I visited the Franklin, Tennessee, Civil War Battlefield. It was at this small town, where 27,000 Confederate soldiers attacked 27,000 Union soldiers. The Union Army was dug-in and prepared to defend their ground. They did. It was November 30, 1864.

Some 10,000 Americans died in the five-hour battle, the vast majority of them Confederates. Eyewitness reports say that near the fieldworks some men died standing up, the dead bodies stacked around them too tightly to permit them to fall. More generals were killed than at any other battle of the war. [HistoryNet]

In today’s museum, we asked the cashier/attendant what was the point of the war. He said, “I’ve read the argument about States’ Rights, but it was about slavery.” When we left that conversation, my brother and I agreed he had read the wrong books. Like most Americans, his government school education taught him this war was about slavery. That was a secondary factor.

A recent study puts the death toll of the Civil War at 850,000. [Civil War Facts] At the Franklin Battlefield, white Confederate soldiers didn’t die standing up because they were passionate about slavery. Maintaining their slave culture wasn’t their motivation; nor was ending the national shame of slavery THE motivator for the northern army. The conquering north got to write the history books. Our government has lied to us about the war. There is a reason why we’ve been duped.

The statues the uninformed want to take down are not symbols of slavery. They are sad memorials to the men who fought for States’ Rights. They tell the story of the war which consolidated a central government and put to death the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Our U.S. Constitution brought together independent states which had the same status of foreign nations. The idea was to cooperate together for a common good. When the Constitution was signed, it was hard to recruit people to serve in Congress. The action was at the state level. At that time, the states appointed federal Senators to represent them. Senators were accountable to their State Legislators. Senators could be fired by their State House. Essentially, the states dictated what the federal government could spend.

Abraham Lincoln did not become President because he had a passion to end slavery. He did not start the war over slavery. For what he said during his first campaign and what he said during the early years of his presidency, he would be considered a racist. For President Lincoln, the war was his attempt to change the nature of the Republic. He wanted a centralized federal government. He wanted to end the commitment to States’ Rights. He full-well-knew he was trying to change the Founders’ blueprint for the United States. As a result of Lincoln’s unconstitutional war, we now have the United State of America. Yet, as a tribute to the success of government education, Abraham Lincoln holds the #1 spot on nearly any list of [Best Presidents of the United States].

Let’s put a mental parenthesis into this article. If your head is not nodding up and down—if you have a hard time accepting the last two paragraphs—then you may want to study this topic. Based on what I already have said, if you desire to know the truth about the Civil War, you are not likely to find it in a government school education. You won’t find it by reading history books which regurgitate government propaganda. If you think this topic is important in understanding our [second civil war]—the one we’re seeing today—then here are five resources (listed in ascending order of time required):

Outside of the political circumstances that led to the secession of several states, a large cross section of the personal writings of southern soldiers shows that support for slavery was a rare motive for most actors. This can be demonstrated even by the writings of James McPherson, an extremely pro-union historian, in his book [What They Fought For]. Based on an unprecedented study of 25,000 letters and 250 diaries, McPherson determined that the “pro-slavery motives,” which he defined extremely loosely, represented about 20% of the sample, an extreme minority of causes articulated in the correspondence of soldiers. “Ideological motives” including autonomy and self-government represented 40% of the sample size. “Patriotic motives” tripled the pro-slavery ones by representing 60% of the sample size.

2. Read this article, also brief: [Rethinking the Civil War, Mises.org]. This article references a quote from Lord Action, “described as ‘the magistrate of history,’ (and) …one of the most learned Englishmen of his time.”[1] This came from his private correspondence with Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Action said:

I saw in States’ Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy . . . I deemed that you (i.e., Lee) were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

That led six other Southern States out of the Union in early 1861. Lincoln could still have saved the Union through compromise at this juncture, but chose not to do so. As Senator James Bayard of Delaware stated in 1861, the Union still existed even with seven States missing. The government, banking houses, and infrastructure remained. It seems that the “Confederate States insistence on slavery” had nothing to do with War. War and secession are separate issues. Secession didn’t mean war was inevitable. Most Americans hoped otherwise, even in the South where President Davis insisted that the South simply wanted to be left alone. To think the opposite is to assume the posture of the British in 1776. That is un-American.

Although Lincoln is credited with ‘saving’ the Union, he saved it only in a geographic sense. What was really saved, if not invented out of whole cloth, was the notion of federal supremacy over the states and the citizens. The existence of the Union as a voluntary association of states was destroyed when the South was compelled at gunpoint to remain a part of it.

5. Finally, if you want to rewire your thinking in areas of history and economics, spend less than $100 to join Tom Woods’s [Liberty Classroom]. There are more lessons here than you can learn in the one-year membership. It is well-worth it. Without this resource, I would not have known the Franklin Battlefield museum attendant had been taught northern propaganda.

So does getting history right really matter? Ten years ago, I would have thought it didn’t matter. Now, my eyes have been opened. If you watch Fox News—or any TV news—ask yourself, “Why don’t they tell the truth about the Civil War and its statues?” Why would even “conservative” corporate media continue to foster government propaganda?

Our dumbed-down, government-schooled populous is allowing a very small group of paid mercenaries to divide our nation.[2] The goal is to oust President Trump and return the governance to the deep state. The roots of this movement date back to the Civil War and the effective propaganda that followed. If you want to stand for the principles and values of our Founding Fathers, it requires understanding history.

We’re at a similar crossroads Luke Skywalker faced upon meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi. To help you make the connection: the uncle is “government propaganda,” the lightsaber is “truth,” the Force is “history,” the Jedi is a “patriot,” and the Empire is the “deep state.” It’s worth four minutes to make the comparison: [“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”] What will you do in today’s epic war?

“Dollar” Bill is a real guy, with real knowledge on our nation’s financial calamity, and real solutions for what must be done to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in. Due to his career, Bill must remain “disguised” to protect his position. “Bill” loves America, sees the impending cliff we are all headed towards, and hopes that by sharing his inside knowledge of the failed monetary policy in our nation, that a fiscal “nuclear” event can be minimized.